Production Talk with Sun Koh on 'Singapore Panda'

Singapore Panda
is a short film by Sun Koh about immigration, Chinese diaspora and the present day globalization of
Singapore.

An old
Singaporean radio station has been bought over by a mainland Chinese-owned
international media conglomerate. 2 old workers are told they have to produce a
radio play as part of a trans-media project about Chinese migrants. The play is
a fictional account of the mass immigration of pandas to Singapore in the early
days, which coincides with the immigration of thousands of mainland Chinese and
even the real pandas Jia Jia and Kai Kai to the Singapore Zoological Gardens in
present day. It tells of the difficult but fulfilling integration of these
pandas into the Singapore social and cultural landscape, which is really a
parallel of our protagonists journey.

The film also
talks about the intergenerational cultural gap between merely 3 generations of
Singaporeans and the need for continuous adaptation to an ever-changing
landscape.

Singapore Panda can be seen here with similar films
from Royston Tan and Tsai Mingliang in a series about Chinese diaspora in
Southeast Asia (only with Chinese subtitles). Simply click on the link below:

How was the idea for the short film
conceived? And we understand this short film was made as part of a series
of short films by Da Huang Pictures?

I received an email from Tan Chui Mui one
day, quite out of the blue, to make a short film with the theme Diaspora and
Homeland. The spotlight is on Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia. I lived in
Kuala Lumpur for a year and in Sweden for 2 years just prior to that and can
definitely relate to being an outsider, and my father is actually a first
generation immigrant Singaporean (this didn't hit me till I was writing the
script). The story is largely based on his own diaspora with tinges of my own.

I knew I wanted to make a film about old
people adapting to the new global paradigm, so that was how the characters were
defined. Something in me also wanted to comment on the current obsession with
trans-media ('Can you make it trans-media?'), so that was how it found its way
into the story.

Coinciding with the commissioning of this
short film is the immigration of Jia Jia and Kai Kai to Singapore, along with
hundreds of thousands of new immigrants. So that was how the pandas found their
way into the story.

What thoughts
do you hope to stir in your audience with this short film?

I think I packed quite a lot into a single
short film because I haven't had a chance to make one for quite some time.

I wanted to show that immigration is
historically very common, it is the story that made Singapore, and that it is
always a very difficult journey for those involved, including for our own
ancestors. The struggle may be over for many of the early immigrants and their
family, but it is new and alive for many who are new here.

I also wanted to reflect this new global
paradigm to overturn some of our biases and prejudices. For example, in the
past China used to be a 3rd world country and they used to work (mainly make
cheap things) for us and the western world, but now they are owning media
conglomerates and people from all over the world are working for them. I
initially wanted the new media executive to be a Caucasian who speaks Chinese
because of his job, but I couldn't find candidates to fit our shooting
schedule. So I thought the next best fit would be a Hong Kong media executive.
In 2006 when I worked in Shanghai for an advertising agency, there were plenty
of Hong Kong media execs who have mastered Mandarin and working for the
mainland Chinese, nevermind that Hong Kongers were only recently the media
moguls of Asia.

This is a reality that we have to adapt to
and not everyone can. For example, I grew up in a totally Mandarin and Teochew
speaking family but because my family wasn't so literate, I never learnt to
read or write in Chinese, and English was prioritised in school. I was a
borderline gone case and after secondary school have all but forgotten what
little I know to read or write in Chinese. Similarly, my father never touched a
computer in his life and when I sent him to basic computer classes he froze up
and basically malfunctioned. But we still try, as the protagonists do. Some are
more optimistic and successful, some are not.

With the film I also wanted to register the
cost of this continuing globalisation with the inclusion of the protagonist's
scenes with his daughter and his grandchildren. Back in the 80s we were told to
embrace globalisation and make English our first language in school, nevermind
if you merely scraped through with your mother-tongue. Dialects were also
banned in the media. I look at all our 3rd or 4th generation Singaporeans today
and the cultural gap between them and their grandparents is irreparable.

And most importantly I wanted to show the
audience that older workers are inventive, inspired and soulful, they are not
useless.

From your
research, are there still people creating analog sound effects

like in the film?

From what I know, creating sound effects
through foley (performing and recording them for digital editing) are still
often practiced, but I am not aware of anyone who still records them on
analogue.

The
re-enactment of the Panda story in the film reflects a lot of
practice. Take us through how you directed and rehearsed the actors for
this.

A lot of it is done during the writing stage.
I write in whatever impressionistic sound effects I think can be achieved with
simple props that fit the story and still look good on camera. Wang Jiaqiang
(Johnny Ng) who plays Panda was at some point a rediffusion recording artist in
the good old days. He had done radio plays before. I consulted him about some
of his methods but eventually couldn't use them because it didn't fit the
story.

I answered this question by talking about
writing because a lot of my 'direction' involves tweaking the script to suit
whoever has been cast within my means. The script is also tweaked according to
the choice of locations, amongst other things, within my means.

I knew I had to cast someone with a great voice,
who is familiar with theatrical acting to pull off the animated radio play.
Wang Jiaqiang fit the bill and Alvin Chiam (also a stage actor) just seemed to
have such good rapport with him. So I cast the two of them. These are 2 very
great stage actors who really need very little direction when it comes to
theatricality. They were also superb with dialogue improvisations. The only
thing I did was adjust their performance to suit the mis-en-scen and the edit,
because unlike the stage, the camera sees a lot more.

The film is
intricate and highly-layered in terms of story and presentation. How long
did you take to develop the story and what were the greatest challenges in
making this film?

I took about a month to write and re-write
the script in total, first to develop the story, then to adapt it to the cast.
It wasn't easy to pitch this film because of its multi-layeredness. It just
sounds kind of lame when you tell the panda's story, and it is precisely the
panda's story that is the protagonists's story. Saying that they are juxtaposed
just didn't cut it, you have to see and hear everything together. This is the
kind of film that has to be told in a film. I don't think anyone bought the
story when I pitched it, but they were kind enough to suspend their disbelieve.
I also think that the low-stakes of it being a short film helped.

When it comes to production, the greatest
challenge was that the level of Mandarin and dialects in this film is way
beyond my standard. I usually write my scripts in English and have it
translated to Chinese, but the language in previous films have been very
elementary. Because of the story I also had to cast people who are highly
Chinese educated, and there is great difficulty when I had to express more
sophisticated ideas to Jiaqiang. Luckily he was very very patient and just put
up with it until it was done. The translator (David Lee) and the rest of the
Chinese cast helped me a lot, so that prevented a total breakdown of
communication. Speak of diaspora!

The casting in
this film is close to perfect. How did you find your actors and why them?

I found them through Han Yew Kwang and his
producer Lau Chee Nien. I knew they worked with many elderly Mandarin speaking
actors and I basically asked them for contacts. I also asked many producer
friends for contacts and after meeting many of them I was most convinced that
Wang Jiaqiang (Johnny Ng) and Alvin Chiam would be the pair.

As mentioned before, I chose them for their
experience as stage actors and also for their rapport. I always believe casting
comes in pair, threes or groups, and it always depends on the dynamics of their
role.

I had initially envisioned Panda (Koh) as a
skinny guy and Ah Hua as the chubby one. It was Alvin Chiam who persuaded me
otherwise. I thought to myself Alvin must know himself and Jiaqiang better, so
I started to see them in the roles Alvin suggested and true enough it was much
better.

Elena Chia who acted in Sandcastle was an
easy choice. She was convincing as their boss, even in real life they really
respect her and want her to like them.

Serene Chen was also an easy choice. She's
perfectly believable as Koh's daughter and she can always be trusted to
deliver. Plus she came with her own daughter Ella, and Ella came with her best
friend Megan. It was a neat package as I thought Serene can help me contain
some of the children's madness, and she did.

Silvia Wong who played the HK exec is in real
life the Producer of Wee Lilin's feature film "Forever". I asked her
because I like the gentle way she spoke and I wanted to overturn the stereotype
of the mean new boss. She is from Hong Kong and also a film producer, so I sort
of knew she wouldn't have to pretend very much in that role. She just had to
learn her lines, which was the hard part, but she did so well.

Grace Zhang Cuiying who played Koh's wife was
a pleasant surprise. Ironically it was Jiaqiang's real wife who remembered that
Grace had acted as his wife before... It really helped that on set the kids
love her. It made my job much easier.

Grace Wan is an old ally, she was the lead in
Bedroom Dancing and I knew she could deliver without a hitch.

I got Siti Khalijah through Effendy of
Substation (I was once an associate artist). I needed someone to deliver the
Zoo's spokesperson lines with a straight face and she aced it.

I'm not happy about them having to live in an
artificial environment. That is in total contradiction to my having been there
to ogle at them twice since.

It is a fact they have been loaned to us as
part of China's panda diplomacy, and that they will be forced to stay here for
10 years to 'educate' the public about their cute self, as part of their
'conservation'.

Since this is the reality dictated to them,
we should try to give them the most humane care possible. For example, change
the muzak being played on loop (I can't imagine listening to the same muzak all
my life), and tell visitors to keep their volume low so as not to terrify Jia
Jia.

I bought keychains made in their likeness as
gifts for friends. I hope that the profits made out of the Jia Jia and Kai Kai
brand can indeed be used for their benefit and the benefit of pandas all over
the world.